Aisa Reis, however, would hear no word of surrender, telling those who
murmured against the defence that "if he heard a word more of these plots
he would infallibly sacrifice every mother's son amongst them, and then lay
the town in ashes." Having already had a taste of the quality of this
redoubtable corsair, and feeling perfectly certain that should the occasion
arise he would be as good as his word, there was no more disaffection among
the inhabitants, who had to put up with their native place being made a
cockpit for Doria and Dragut to fight out their quarrel. It is permissible
to sympathise very sincerely with these unfortunates, who, having been
betrayed in the first instance, were compelled to stand a siege in the
second.
Aisa had a picked force of his uncle's men, some seventeen hundred foot and
six hundred horse, all seasoned and formidable veterans, inured to warfare
by land and sea. On these of course he could rely to the death. The common
folk of the town were inclined to make common cause with the corsairs in
resistance to their hereditary enemy the Christians; but the magistrates
and members of the council, the grave and reverend signiors, held so
conspicuously aloof that Aisa was constrained into forcing them to aid in
the defence when he had time to attend to the matter. As Dragut was not
actually present at the siege it falls outside the scope of this chronicle;
he was without the walls when the besiegers arrived, but all that he could
do, that he did.
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